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Desperately seeking help with 1-4a Rename

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zridling:
Due to life's many inconveniences, I'm just starting on the File Renamer review, and right off the bat, I'm completely stumped by 1-4a Rename. Despite the tooltips, examples, and How Does This Work pages, I still can't make 1-4a Rename do anything I want. I'm EXTREMELY confused by the interface after working with it for almost two hours. It X's files, and then it doesn't. It won't preview parts of names, and despite examples using $$ everywhere, it shows nothing. I need a Help File, otherwise I'm just going by first impressions, and if the program is too difficult to begin to figure out after an hour, then I ain't going to bother much longer.

Am I stupid? No.
Slow? Oh hell yes.

I wrote to the author, but the only email link on his site that worked was his comment link. If you're a fan of this program, help me out; leave a response, or send me an email on how to get started. The author's 'Typical Problems' and 'Examples' pages are so numerous and lengthy that the several I tried were no help.

kimmchii:
can you rename a simple file?

try create a new txt file: 123_123.txt
in a new folder
then use 1-4a Rename to rename the file to 123.123.txt
by checking "replace" _ with .

then click "start"

zridling:
It renamed it in the preview window, but not in the folder. If I undo it, and re-"Start" the renaming process, and it does nothing despite all files being "X". And that's both in Expert and Basic modes. I'm running version 1.56.0 and even downloaded it again to make sure I had the latest.

(Got to sleep now — 6a here — and am tired.) Thanks kimmchii.

rjbull:
I'm EXTREMELY confused by the interface after working with it for almost two hours.
-zridling (April 26, 2006, 04:41 AM)
--- End quote ---

The interface is somewhat strange, yes.  I suspect that's in part owing to attempting to put everything on a single screen without a help file.

It X's files, and then it doesn't. It won't preview parts of names, and despite examples using $$ everywhere, it shows nothing.

--- End quote ---

I think "X-ing" files, marking them for operations, is controlled by more than one thing.  That is, you have to specify the right wildcard in the top left hand box, and ask 1-4a to perform an operation.  E.g. if I want to search-and-replace say "044" in a filename with "zzz," it doesn't mark files with an X until the right wildcard is set, and I've ticked the "Replace" box, and set the search text to "044."

I doubt that helps very much; I only needed 1-4a for simple operations, mostly inserting or replacing bits of text, though I didn't have any problems with those.  Since I discovered the power of Total Commander's inbuilt equivalent, I've seldom used 1-4a.

Just noticed something else.  If I launch it form a COMMAND.COM DOS box under Win2K, it comes up with a plain top bar.  If I launch it with the switches "/e /noc" (expert mode, no online check = don't connect with the Internet) it announces its version number on the top bar.

Possible work-around for the looong FAQ: save to disk, reduce HTML to plain text, search/view with your favourite file searcher/viewer?

kimmchii:
You're welcom zridling, i am not sure why it works only in the preview for you, is the read only or something?

i attached a screenshot of 1-4a Rename here, you can see it is really simple:

Desperately seeking help with 1-4a Rename

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